How To Fill In Your Eyebrows Like A Pro

Today we're proud to present the first story in the site's new series—How To: Fill In Your Brows. Makeup artist Sage Maitri (her clients include Alexa Chung and Camilla Belle) walks us through the step-by-step process, so be sure to click through for her tutorial and don't forget to visit Byrdie for even more of-the-moment beauty news.

“The first step to tweezing is knowing where to tweeze,” Maitri says. Using your eyeball as a guide, line up the handle of the makeup brush on the outer edge of or your iris. Wherever it hits—that’s your arch. “This is where you’ll take the most hair,” Maitri says. “But keep in mind that may only be a few hairs.”

Maitri recommends using slanted tweezers, like Tweezerman’s Pink Perfection Slant Tweezer ($22). “Be careful not to tweeze past the inner corner of your eye,” she says.”That’s your starting point.” And don’t tweeze the ends! They almost never grow back. You can use aloe or cortisone cream to calm your skin down if it’s red post-tweezing.

You can fill in your brows with a pencil or powder and an angled brush—use whichever one you’re most comfortable with. If your brows are particularly sparse, Maitri suggest a two-step approach. “Use a powder to create the shape and then with a very thin pencil, like Anastasia of Beverly Hills Brow Wiz ($21), use wispy light feathery strokes to create the illusion of real hairs,” she says.

Though a pigmented gel might look like a one-stop solution to all of the steps above, Maitri suggests sticking with a transparent formula, like Maybelline’s Great Lash ($5) in Clear, to hold them in place. “Colored brow gels can get messy,” she says. “Model in a Bottle Long Lasting Eyebrow Sealer ($13) is fantastic for girls with oily skin.”